Re: [PATCH] Documentation: remove confusing paragraph about backslash escaping

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Hannes Frederic Sowa <hsowa@bfk.de>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Florian Weimer <fweimer@bfk.de>
Date: 2012-02-27T23:10:39Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Hannes Frederic Sowa <hsowa@bfk.de> wrote:
>> As with recent changes to `standard_conforming_strings' the paragraph about
>> backslash escaping in the description of `LIKE' is only confusing. Thus I
>> attached a patch to remove it.

> I think I agree with removing this paragraph; it made sense when
> standard_conforming_strings=off was the default, but that's not so
> anymore.  We could come up with some alternative text to insert here
> but I think that might be unnecessarily long-winded.

On a closer look, I see three different places in the
functions-matching.html page that talk about doubling backslashes, of
which this one might be the least bogus, since it at least provides
a cross-reference to someplace where you would read about
standard_conforming_strings.

I suggest replacing the first and third cases with something along the
lines of

	Note: if you have standard_conforming_strings turned off, any
	backslashes you write in literal string constants will need to be
	doubled.  See Section 4.1.2.1 for more information.

The second case is just a parenthetical comment and perhaps could be
removed.

			regards, tom lane